Information on working terriers, dogs, natural history, hunting, and the environment, with occasional political commentary as I see fit. This web log is associated with the Terrierman.com web site.

Friday, December 05, 2014

Cavaliers in the River

A slightly modified tale:

One summer in the village, the people gathered for a picnic. As they shared food and conversation, someone noticed a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in the river, struggling and yelling. The dog was going to drown!
Someone rushed to save the dog. Then, they noticed another yowling Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in the river, and they rushed in to pull that dog out. Soon, more dogs were seen drowning in the river, and the townspeople were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the Cavaliers as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the dogs, two of the townspeople started to run up the shore of the river.
“Where are you going?” shouted one of the rescuers. “We need you here to help us save these dogs!”
“We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!”

I recount this story because of the great irony associated with a putative act of kindness being done by well-meaning dog owners.
The short story here is that a group of people on a "breeder' Facebook page got themselves ginned up about the fact that an "Amish" puppy mill operation was putting 96 Cavalier King Charles Spaniels up on the auction block. This was, of course, horrible and someone had to do something, and so "let's raise money," and things spiraled up and out from there.
When the dust finally settled, over $400,000 was raised and all the dogs were purchased "to save them from a horrible life of being caged and bred to death."
Anyone know where this story is going? Get out the Rustoleum -- some irony may be involved!Let's start with the good news and the good intentions. The good news is that the dogs -- who are without sin -- were rescued from a very bad situation. Full applause!Let's also note that all of the people in this rescue effort had good intentions. In fact, what occurred here is a classic story right out of the Bible. In the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), Jesus says that the way to heaven is to come to the aid of those who are battered, hungry, and destitute. The set up to this story, however, is generally lost due to poor translation. The Pharisee is not asking Jesus what he should do in any specific situation -- he asking what is good policy? The distinction is not a small one.Yes, if you come across a person who is bleeding in a ditch, bind up their wounds and invite them in for a hot meal.But what are we to do with scores of thousands of people bleeding in ditches? Who has the bandages, the iodine, and the rooms to accommodate them all? What do we do in that situation?And so we come back to a first movement question: How is it that all those Cavaliers ended up being sold by one puppy mill owner to an auction that catered to other puppy millers? And what could that possibly have to do with so many of these very same people now riding in to play "Rescue Ranger?"The answer, of course, is the AKC and their complete and total lack of ethics.As I noted in a previous post about the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel:

It's often been said that Kennel Club breeders are trying to "breed to a picture."
Nowhere is that more true than in the case of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, a breed cobbled up in the 1920s and 30s to "recreate" the type of lap dog seen in the oil paintings of aristocrats painted by Titian, van Dyck, Stubbs, and Gainsborough.
While owners of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels like to wrap themselves up in the pretension of having an ancient breed related to British royalty, this particular dog was in fact created in the late 1920s and 30s at the Crufts Dog Show. . . .. . . . The AKC admitted the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel into its "Miscellaneous" class in 1962, and accepted the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club of the USA as the official breed club and registering body at that time.
The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club of the USA applied several times for full Kennel Club recognition, but was rejected each time, and after a number of years the CKCSC-USA simply decided to move forward without the AKC, creating its own stud book, establishing its own show system, and adopting its own code of ethics. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel remained in the "miscellaneous" class of the AKC, but this was mostly done to allow those interested in obedience trials to compete in that venue.
Members of the the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club of the USA developed their own culture outside of that of the American Kennel Club, and that culture put a significant premium on their own lengthy code of ethics, which members had to agree to in order to join the club and register their dogs.
This code of ethics stated that "the welfare of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel breed is of paramount importance. It supersedes any other commitment to Cavaliers, whether that be personal, competitive, or financial."
The code of ethics went on to say that members of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club of the USA agreed to not sell dogs to pet shops, agreed to NOT breed bitches before 12 months of age or after age eight, and agreed to never allow a bitch to carry to term and rear more than six litters in her lifetime.
Finally, the breed club's code of ethics noted that "These exists a constant danger that ignorant or disreputable breeders may, by improper practices, produce physically, mentally or temperamentally unsound specimen to the detriment of the breed" and requested that members of the Club consult with other breeders in the club before a mating and to never breed "from or to any Cavalier known to me to have a disqualifying, or disabling health defect."
The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club of the USA prospered as an independent registry, with slow but steady growth in it membership. In 1992, however, the American Kennel Club decided that it wanted to clear out breeds that had been in the "miscellaneous" class for many years, and they asked the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club of the USA to become the breed club.
There was one caveat, however: The Cavalier King Charles Club Spaniel Club of the USA could NOT make acceptance of a ban on selling dogs to pet stores a prerequisite for dog registration. Nor could they require that breeders avoid knowingly crossing dogs with inheritable disqualifying or disabling defects. If the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club of the USA wanted to be the AKC's breed club, they would have to jettison their code of ethics and conform to the AKC's rules which said any dog could and would be registered provided it paid a fee to the AKC and could claim descent from a previously registered AKC dog and dam.
The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club USA declined to join the AKC as the parent club of their breed, and so the AKC reached out to a small set of breeders who were a little less ethical and a little more rosette- and cash-hungry. These breeders formed the American Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club, and this club was waved into the AKC in 1995.
What happened next?
The short story is that Cavalier King Charles Spaniel registrations shot through the roof.
As the AKC's own web site notes, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels were "among the biggest movers" in the last 10 years with a 406% increase in registrations. In fact, Cavalier King Charles spaniel registrations are up 800 percent from what they were 14 years ago, and the Cavalier is now the 25th most popular breed in the AKC (up from 70th 1997) out of a list of 157 breeds in all.
And what has happened to the quality of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel?
As could be predicted, it has fallen through the floor.
A breed with an already bottle-necked gene pool due to its peculiar history and recent origin, was further choked down in 1995 when the AKC recruited a small subset of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel owners to serve as the foundation stock of their new breed club.
The small number of dogs owned by these breeders is as wide as the gene pool of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is ever going to get in the AKC.
And because so many small AKC dogs come from puppy mill situations where sires may be used hundreds of time, and dams may be pregnant nearly all their lives, the gene pool of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (never strong to begin with) has contracted very rapidly.

Read the whole post to understand the full history here, and to get a complete run-down of the very serious health care problems associated with this breed.
None of this is the irony part. The irony part is that a lot of the folks who said "MY GOD Cavaliers are in puppy mills," and MY GOD they are being sold at auction to the AMISH (those people!), are themselves associated with .... wait for it ... wait for it ... the American Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club. Yes, that's right, many of the people now swaddling themselves as "puppy mill saviors" are actually dues-paying members of the ethics-free breed club that was knighted by the AKC to represent the breed provided they salute the Devil's Bargain of allowing puppy mill registration and pet store sales.

But wait, there's more. You see, the mass "rescue buying" of puppies does little more than throw gasoline on to the fire of puppy mill sales and auctions. As I told one person involved in this particular rescue:

You guys were like the vegans who show up with a roll of cash to buy spring lambs. After the second bid, everyone at the auction knows what's going on on. You got played.

This kind of thing fuels the puppy mill business. It becomes legend -- the $220,000 or $400,000 sale that they will talk about for years.

The Amish can get as many Cavaliers as they want, because the people who breed dogs crank them out like goldfish for the bait trade.

The funny part here is that it was a "breeders group" ginning up the money. I have been on a lot of these group boards over the years, and it's a lot of rosette chasers and check-cashers.

And Cavaliers? That breed needs to be completely banned; it's that much of a genetic mess.

People are free to waste their money, but you might look into the role of the AKC when it comes to Cavaliers and puppy mills.

And, of course, the response was simply to say that people could spend their money as they see fit. Which is quite right!

But let's not act as if AKC members are not complicit in puppy mill misery, eh?

The AKC itself says it is economically dependent on puppy mills, and Cavalier puppy mill registrations are a big part of that dependency.

"Between all of us, we got all the dogs. I feel relieved. I was more worried about the ones we [initially] didn't get. We said no Cavaliers left behind."

Leave no Cavalier behind?

That's a good sound biteto use for raising money, but that's not an achievable mission so long as people keep registering their dogs with the AKC.

It's certainly not an achievable mission so long as people rush to every Amish dog auction with big sacks of cash in order to scoop up stock at massively inflated prices.

This is not to saythat the folks who were trying to rescue these dogs are bad people. Far from it!

But let us be clear that the folks who are putting all those Cavaliers in the river are not nameless, faceless people who live on roads without names in houses without numbers.

The folks putting all those Cavaliers in the river are not "the odd other" wearing black coats and driving horse-drawn buggies or living in trash-strewn trailer homes jungled up in some hillbilly holler in Alabama or West Virginia.

The single biggest part of the problem is the AKC whose corporate headquarters are on Madison Avenue in New York City.

11 comments:

Let's also note that all of the people in this rescue effort had good contentions.

Well, their intentions may have been good, but the contention (or perhaps, slightly more accurately, belief) that this would solve the problem of puppymilled King Charles Cavaliers from that one breeder was clearly flawed.

Hum, I wonder how many of those 'good' people who rescued all those Spaniels immediately took them out to be neutered? Or did they breed them because they were so cute and also valuable on the open market.The problems of pet population will never be solved with the heart. It must be done with the brain.PS the Amish do the same thing with their horses. So much for quoting the bible about it.

Thanks Rob -- I caught the typo on the cellphone and came back to see you caught it before I did. Not sure if my brain mistyped due to 4 am fatigue, or if that was something I farked up while coding (which is to say **stripping out code** to get rid of the garbage that blogger sometimes adds for some reason).

I am sure the rescues will S/N and try to place all, but it's a heculean task to place a litter of puppies, much less 96 adult, some of whom will have problems of one kind or another. And all placements have a "bounce rate" were the dog ends up somewhere else. In the end, it will not be pretty.

@ seeker- I am almost 100% sure that ALL repeat ALL of the 98 Cavaliers purchased by the rescues that day at the auction were neutered and spayed. Not one was bought to be bred. You can quote me on that.Carol O'TooleFounder- The Cavalier Brigade

Seeker, I was there when some of those dogs came from auction. After checkups and blood work, they were neutered and spayed. This was the case unless the dog wasn't well enough to undergo the procedure. These dogs went into the care of several different groups. ALL went straight into veterinary care for care AND neuter and spaying. Including the youngest. No one considered these dogs appropriate as breeders especially because of where they came from. The vast majority of Cavalier owners know of the terrible results of in-breeding. Let me clarify one point in the blog, the person who sent these dogs to auction was not Amish. But, some of those there to bit on dogs were from Amish puppy mills. Thanks for addressing this issue. Those of us supporting rescue efforts support having intelligent conversations. Whether we agree or not,I'm confident that none of us would support the conditions of these mills. I would prefer the rules of the original CKCS club were still in place, even if it meant I couldn't afford to own one. BTW, I have two...both rescues.

If I was wrong, and I hope I was and you are right, then I apologize. I've been involved with rescuing too long not to be suspicious. All my dogs are rescues too and one, I got her from a pound, was not only not spayed but was too pregnant to spay when I got her. I guess I'm a suspicious old gal who hopes for the best and expects the worst. Sorry for my sharp tongue.

this is one of the saddest but most brilliantly complete stories i have ever read... yes, we blew it with that auction... we set a standard that is going toput a boatload of over worked and over bred dogs into overtime...the core, the very heart of this is to ignore these auctions...yes i know , that is awful, but commerce is commerce and without the money of well meaning dog lovers the market will slow down... the very heart of this though is the very limited standards to which breeders must be held... i do not care if there are mass breeders, as long as the breeding stock is treated humanely... no auto feeders, no water bottles, no cages too small, no wire under their feet... decent vet care and temperature control... fresh air...we, as dog lovers, must come together about this... a new group REFORM CANINE BREEDERS AND AUCTIONS is starting and if we all work together... we can make a difference...please please... help us help the dogs

Just as an aside--as someone who takes foster dogs for a local breed-club-affiliated rescue, most of the dogs we see whose background we know,and who came from pet stores, are not AKC-registered. They are registered with the Continental Kennel Club or WWKC or one of the other registries used to get around the chance of AKC inspection. Not an apologist for the AKC, just noting this.

This situation was unusual for many reasons:1. They did not come from a puppy mill. Most were in excellent health. The situation was more like a breeder who degenerated into a hoarding situation due to severe health crisis among others issues.2. A rogue group working as volunteers of CavalierRescus USA targeted this breeder and her dogs. These dogs - several of whom were of good lineage (including a breeder showing at Crufts this year who is STILL trying to get her dog back as a reputable breeder would - refer to story at http://www.dogworld.co.uk/product.php/132074/34/breeder_battles_for_cavalier_after_us_auction_fiasco) were pawns in an expensive game. 3. The breeder was driven to send the dogs to auction through harassment. This was only part of her kennel. Rescue, not the rogue group, were able to get the rest of this breeders dogs - mostly bitches and puppies all in good condition - without the hoopla or auction - working behind the scenes to avoid issues.4. The rogue group brought 46 of the dogs to AL under the auspices of the GBHS and kept several of the dogs for themselves after buying them with funds donated by people in the breed community and turned them all into rescue fails. There are actions now trying to get information, recoup dogs, and follow the money. As we all know, rescue fails is not what true rescue is about otherwise how would rescue keep helping dogs.5. This rogue group used a NYC PR firm to help them whip up the community to raise money - once these dogs were out to auction their opportunity to get any of the dogs cheap was gone.CavalierRescue USA severed ties with these individuals because like the ORIGINAL breed club has high standards and is devoted to true rescue in the breed and rules were broken. They have since started their own 'rescue'. 6. So this group of dogs was a special situation in terms of rescue folks going to auction. We all hated the precedent it might set with millers and auctions but wanted to save this group of dogs. 7. As stated in another comment ALL of the dogs (with the exception of those who are still too young or are sick - but even one boy was neutered during a procedure to correct another issue) were neutered/spayed including the UK breeder's dog. Part of the goal was to prevent these dogs from producing further litters. My apologies for this being so long but I wanted to help set the record straight. Yes I have two CKCS. But I also have a rescue mix and have always had rescue dogs. I want to be sure that rescues who partake in REAL rescue trying to help as many helpless animals as possible don't have their reputations and successes ruined by misconceptions or by misdeeds.